The Devil Met a Lady by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

fishing box in my right. It was heavy.
    “What is this, Mrs. Plaut?”
    “Mah-Jongg,” she said. “Some pieces are coming loose again, you know, tops sliding off the tiles. You are to take them to your friend with the special glue. I need them in two days when Jesse, Claire, and Eleanor come over.”
    I nodded. Shelly had fixed her Mah-Jongg tiles before. He said they were no different from teeth.
    I went up the stairs. My first stop was the communal washroom, where the gumbatz disappeared and I washed the bowl.
    My second stop was the pay telephone at the head of the stairs. I found Andrea G. Pinketts in the Los Angeles directory under private investigators . I fished out a nickel and called. There was an answer on the sixth ring.
    “Pinketts Agency,” he said. “This is Andrea Pinketts. My secretary isn’t here.”
    “Pinketts, you don’t have a secretary.”
    “Who is this?”
    “Toby Peters.”
    “Toby Peters?”
    “Six years ago,” I reminded him. “I was just starting out as a private investigator and you hired me for a job in Coldwater Canyon.”
    “I remember,” he said.
    “Maybe I can return the favor.”
    “Way I remember it,” said Pinketts, “you got a little upset when you found out what the job was.”
    “Yeah, but I did it and took the paycheck. Depression. Times were hard. I may have some work for you if you’re interested.”
    “I’m interested,” said Pinketts, who had been working into his Gilbert Roland accent as we continued to talk.
    “You want me to come to your office?”
    “I don’t work out of an office,” said Pinketts proudly. “I’m on the move too much for an office. I’ll meet you somewhere.”
    I knew this story. I’d used it as recently as that morning.
    “Fine. It’s a nice day. How about—”
    “There’s a coffee shop, Andy’s, on Melrose and Vine.”
    “I know it. Few blocks from Paramount.”
    “Right. I know the people who own it. Good people. Honest people. Coffee’s on you, right?”
    “Right,” I said.
    “I can be there in five minutes,” he said. “But, my friend, the meeting is yours. You name the time.”
    “Twenty minutes,” I said.
    “Twenty minutes,” he confirmed, and we both hung up.
    I returned the empty bowl to Mrs. Plaut, praised her gumbatz and the memory of her father, and escaped, Mah- Jongg box in hand, in need of coffee.
    It took me fifteen minutes to get to Andy’s on Melrose and Vine and another three minutes to park. It’s usually easy to park my battered Crosley. It fits comfortably into any space larger than a phone booth.
    My one and only business deal with Andrea G. Pinketts had been a subcontract from a big agency, the kind of deal Pinketts specialized in. We put microphones in the bedroom of a house in Coldwater Canyon, a nice house. I didn’t know who lived there. The big agency had been hired by the husband, a bandleader named Ham Nelson who was supposed to be working all night in a hotel in Santa Monica. The wife was out. We had plenty of time to set up. I didn’t know what we were setting up for, but knowing Pinketts’s reputation, I had some idea it wasn’t something a top-flight agency would take on. Nelson, the husband, a nervous guy around forty with curly hair, set us up in a toolshed behind the house. Pinketts and I got the earphones and the discs ready and waited with the bandleader at our side.
    Around nine a car pulled up and someone went in the house. About ten minutes later they went into the bedroom. About two minutes after that, I knew from the voice that the woman was Bette Davis. I didn’t know who the man was, but it was clear and being recorded that he had a performance problem and she was helping him.
    The husband, who hung over our shoulders listening with his own earphones, waited longer than seemed reasonable for an outraged husband.
    When it was clear that things were moving along with some success in the house and that the man with Bette Davis had, with her guidance, begun to